SECOND INTERNATIONAL GAY YOUTH CONGRESS

Roughly 50 young gay men and lesbians participated in the Second International
Gay Youth Congress in Dublin from July 7 to 12 [1985]. The Congress was
funded, in part, by the European Youth Foundation and was attended by delegates
from Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland (North and South), the
Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States
of America.

The following are 4 of the 13 resolutions
adopted:

As young people,
we must be free to choose our own identities and lifestyles. We oppose
ages of consent and all laws which restrict consensual sexual activity
because, as young people, they limit our sexual freedom and deny us the
right to choose who we relate to sexually.

We call for the
abolition of all ages of consent and demand that young people's and women's
complaints of sexual assault be taken seriously and that positive discrimination
be applied to counter existing power imbalances. Youth must be made less
dependent on older people, materially and emotionally.

We would like
to insist that the organizers of the Third International Gay Youth Congress
spend as large a time as possible, and make positive discrimination in
order to encourage more female delegates, non-white delegates, and younger
delegates to attend this congress. Only when this is achieved will the
congress be representative of all ...

We, the Second
International Gay Youth Congress, urge the Northern Ireland Gay Rights
Association and Cara Friend to withdraw their dismissive attitudes towards
gay youth and to campaign strongly for an equal age of consent with their
heterosexual counterparts, while ages of consent still exist.